Here Lowell struck the note which had been the key of his political writing in the agitation against slavery, and that in which all his active political life after this was to be pitched. Independence, not in politics only but in the entire domain of human thought, had indeed been characteristic of all his work heretofore, and it was the solitariness of a life thus attuned which led to this slight expression of dejection. But he had been for all that a leader of the intellectual and thoughtful class in America, and it was a happy omen that collegians were in the group which was now to call him from his study into the field of political life.
Lowell not only presided at the meeting in Cambridge, but he became permanent chairman of the committee then formed for the organization of voters in Cambridge, a function which had been performed hitherto by office-holders under the government. The Congressional district to which Cambridge belonged then included also Jamaica Plain, and similar action was taken there under the leadership of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. As a result of the movement Lowell and Dr. Clarke were selected at the district convention as delegates to the Republican convention in Cincinnati which was to nominate a candidate for the presidency.[62]
Lowell was very much interested in the position in which he found himself, nor could he help looking at himself in this new rôle with an amusing distrust. “Last night,” he wrote to Leslie Stephen, 10 April, 1876, “I appeared in a new capacity as chairman of a political meeting, where I fear I made an ass of myself. It was got up by young men who wish to rouse people to their duty in attending caucuses and getting them out of the hands of the professionals.... I think the row is likely to do good, however, in getting us better candidates in the next presidential election, and waking everybody up to the screaming necessity of reform in our Civil Service.”
It was about this time also, apparently, that Lowell’s name began to be connected with the diplomatic service of the country. It would seem as if his old friend Robert Carter had interested himself in the matter. At any rate, Lowell wrote him 13 April, 1876: “I am much obliged to you for your friendly interest, but you misunderstood my note to Page. I wrote it in haste to save the mail at John’s room, borrowing therefor his last sheet of paper. What I meant to say was that if, when the Russian Embassy was offered me, it had been the English instead, I should have hesitated before saying no. But with the salary cut down as it is now, I couldn’t afford to take it, for I could not support it decently.” A glimpse of his financial embarrassment at this time is seen in a letter to the same correspondent two days later, when, replying to the request for the gift, apparently, of his Fourth of July Ode to a newspaper, he says: “I can’t afford to give it away. The greater part of my income was from Western railroad bonds that have stopped payment, and the Atlantic (to which I have promised what I may write) will pay me $300 for it.” On the 19th of April, he writes again to Mr. Carter: “I return Mr. Fish’s letter. There is no more chance of their sending me to St. James’s than to the moon, though I might not be unwilling to go. On the old salary I might manage, and it might do my health good. I have little doubt it was offered to L[ongfellow] with the understanding that he would decline. I have not seen him for a few days. But it is too large a plum for anybody not ‘inside politics.’ It is the only mission where the vernacular sufficeth. Meanwhile you will be amused to hear that I am getting inside politics after a fashion. I shall probably head the delegation from our ward to the State convention.”
Lowell went to the National Convention at Cincinnati, like others of the same mind, with the hope of securing the nomination for the presidency for Mr. Bristow of Kentucky, who as a member of Grant’s cabinet had shown himself very active in the prosecution of malfeasants. The fact, moreover, that he came from Kentucky was an additional reason in Lowell’s mind. “I believed,” he wrote, that a Kentucky candidate might at least give the starting-point for a party at the South whose line of division should be other than sectional, and by which the natural sympathy between reasonable and honest men at the North and the South should have a fair chance to reassert itself. We failed, but at least succeeded in preventing the nomination of a man[63] whose success in the Convention (he would have been beaten disastrously at the polls) would have been a lesson to American youth that selfish partisanship is a set-off for vulgarity of character and obtuseness of moral sense. I am proud to say that it was New England that defeated the New England candidate.”[64]
In a letter written at two different times in the summer of 1876, to Thomas Hughes,[65] Lowell dwells at length upon the political situation and his own hopes and fears. His attitude toward public affairs was that of one who had not abandoned his fundamental beliefs but was questioning the methods of carrying them out, and was distrustful of existing machinery. He reiterates his conviction that the war was fought for nationality, and that emancipation was a very welcome incident. Hence he is inclined to lay the emphasis in reunion on the need of reconciliation with the Southern whites rather than on the protection of the blacks. He is disposed to sympathize with the Democratic party at the South but cannot overcome his distrust of the party as a whole. He bids his correspondent go slow in England in extending the suffrage, but he reasserts his unshaken faith in the people of his country. As the summer wears away he is more impatient over the confusion of issues, but on the whole thinks he shall vote for Hayes.
Lowell’s new interest in politics and his slight active part led his neighbors to wish to send him to Congress as representative from his district, and he was urged to stand, but he resolutely refused, confident that he had not the true qualifications for the office, though he was touched by the confidence shown in him. He did, however, accept the honorable position of presidential elector on the Republican ballot. He let off a little of his mind in the first draft of the verses “In an Album,” where the last four lines of the first stanza read:—
“While many a page of bard and sage
Deemed once the world’s immortal gain
Lost from Time’s ark, leaves no more mark
Than Conkling, Cameron, or Blaine.”
It was in the late summer and early fall of 1876, also, when the political fight was hottest, that Lowell peppered the enemy with the half-dozen epigrams of which he preserved only one, “A Misconception.” The allusions in some were to passing incidents, so that footnotes to his two-line epigrams would now be needed. Some with good memory will need no key to unlock this:—
THE WIDOW’S MITE.